What I've been reading

The Iliad
by Homer

"Homer has created a timeless, dramatic tragedy out of a single episode in the Tale of Troy - Achilles' withdrawal from the fighting and his return to kill the Trojan hero Hector. His characters are heroic but their passions and problems are human and universal, and he presents them with compassion, understanding, and humour against the harsh background of war."

All I knew about the siege of Troy was the story of the wooden horse, which isn't even part of the story in the Iliad. My recently acquired knowledge about this Greek heroic epic poem, however, is extensive. Firstly, given that the poem was originally transmitted entirely orally before eventually being written down long after it was first composed, 'Homer' is by no means an identifiable person. More likely, Homer was the name associated with the style of both the Iliad and the Odyssey when they were finally transcribed. Secondly and much more esoterically, the poem is written in iambic hexameter with 95% of feet being dactyls (DUM-diddle) and the remainder spondees (dum-dum).

The book I actually read is a prose translation that makes no attempt to reconstruct the poetic nature of the work, and it's been much more interesting to read than I was expecting. For instance, after describing exactly how each person meets his death in battle (where the spear or arrow or sword hits them and what the damage is), a brief biography is given, usually including where he came from, what his previous employment was, who his parents were and sometimes also details of his wife and children. This certainly slows down the narrative pace of the battle. The gods are portrayed as imperfect beings who operate much like any family in their preferential treatment of their favourites and unfair treatment of mortals they aren't keen on, although their ability to transform into other shapes and pass messages to humans and to skip back and forth between the battlefield and Olympus is decidedly godlike.

The poem actually describes only 51 days in the siege of Troy, a single episode resulting from a spat between the Greek King Agamemnon and his compatriot Achilles. A woman who was given to Achilles following some victory in battle is taken from him by King Agamemnon, and Achilles has an epic tantrum and refuses to fight any more. Eventually his best mate Patroclus borrows Achilles' armour, goes off to fight and gets himself killed, at which point Achilles goes utterly mental, culminating in him killing Hector, the best Trojan warrior and favourite son of Priam, the king of Troy. Achilles not only ties dead Hector's body to his chariot and drags it round the city walls in triumph and revenge against the killing of his best mate, but then drags the body around Patroclus's funeral site every day subsequently (the god Apollo protects Hector's body so it doesn't rot or get damaged). Eventually Achilles gives the body up to Priam in return for a ransom, and the book ends with Hector's funeral. Not entirely what I was expecting, but better than many of the 'classic' books I've been reading.

Becoming a Writer
by Dorothea Brande

"A unique and genuinely inspirational guide to creative writing, constantly in demand with writers and students of writing. She believes that there is such a thing as the writer's magic, that everybody has it in differing degrees and that it can be taught."

This is an old book, written in 1934, but also one of my older books, acquired and first read by me in 1988. It isn't about the technique of writing, plotting, character or any aspect of writing, it's about how a person becomes a writer - how to coax the material out of your conscious and unconscious brain, how to make sure your thoughts are successfully transferred to paper, how to avoid your style being contaminated by other authors - how to write, not what to write. I want to follow its instruction and exercises, but it's one more activity that I have to fit into the scanty 24 hours available to me every day. I'm working towards it, and when I start to see the light at the end of the tunnel I will definitely come back to this small book and its inspirational and practical advice.

The Essex Serpent
by Sarah Perry

narrated by Juanita McMahon

"It is 1893. Cora is a well-to-do London widow who moves to the Essex parish of Aldwinter, and Will is the local vicar. They meet as their village is engulfed by rumours that the mythical Essex Serpent, once said to roam the marshes claiming human lives, has returned."

This is a recently published book which received a good deal of praise and sounded interesting in a Gothic sort of way. It wasn't bad but the narration was odd; sometimes the narrator delivered a sentence that seemed to indicate she wasn't familiar with English idiom. Again, I hoped for too much of the ending. It was fine, but not fully satisfactory in the way I want an ending to be.

The Rose of Tibet
by Lionel Davidson

"A filmmaker is reported dead near Mount Everest. His brother, Charles Houston, is convinced he's alive and is determined to find him. He travels from India to the Yamdring monastery in the forbidden land of Tibet."

This is a bleak tale but told very well. It came from one of those piles of books that someone shows you to give you the option of taking any that you fancy before they are taken to some charity shop. Someone who knows more about China-Tibet situation in the 1950s would perhaps have a head start on feeling at home with part of the plot at least.

The Prestige
by Christopher Priest

narrated by Simon Vance

"In 1878, two young stage magicians clash in the dark during the course of a fraudulent séance. From this moment on, their lives become webs of deceit and revelation as they vie to outwit and expose one another."

It's a confusing mixture of Victorian reality and science fiction, and I must have read it before because I somehow knew what was going on, which helped a great deal to untangle the prose in the first section. I've seen the film too, and I actually think the film is slightly better, which is unusual.

The Three-Body Problem
by Cixin Liu (translated by Ken Liu)

"Beijing police ask nanotech engineer Wang Miao to infiltrate a secretive cabal of scientists after a spate of inexplicable suicides. Wang's investigation will lead him to a mysterious online game and immerse him in a virtual world ruled by the intractable and unpredictable interaction of its three suns."

The first book of an odd science fiction trilogy loaned to me by a friend who has spent some time in China, and who commends this book as conveying a sense of the original language. As someone who has never been to China I don't think I got as much out of it as my friend did, but I will still be going ahead with the next one.